The White House would forge ahead with military action in Libya even if Congress passed a resolution constraining the mission, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a classified briefing to House members Wednesday afternoon.

Clinton was responding to a question from Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) about the administration's response to any effort by Congress to exercise its war powers, according to a senior Republican lawmaker who attended the briefing.

The answer surprised many in the room because Clinton plainly admitted the administration would ignore any and all attempts by Congress to shackle President Obama's power as commander in chief to make military and wartime decisions. In doing so, he would follow a long line of Presidents who have ignored the act since its passage, deeming it an unconstitutional encroachment on executive power.

...............

The War Powers Act of 1973, passed in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, puts limits on the ability of the President to send American troops into combat areas without congressional approval. Under the act, the President can only send combat troops into battle or into areas where ''imminent'' hostilities are likely, for 60 days without either a declaration of war by Congress or a specific congressional mandate.

34. The constitution has a clause to specifically prevent standing armies.

Which has been ignored longer than anybody here has been alive, and only Congress is supposed to authorize war, so yes, we have torn the Constitution to pieces, even if most of the tears have been pre-Obama, this is only another one, a bit more damaging coming from a purported "liberal" and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Our nation had better address the violations of the Constitution, somehow. Either by amending it to reflect current reality or, better, cutting back on Executive power. Otherwise, nobody knows where the power of the President stops.

I didn't think it was necessary for me to cite it. It's easy enough to find in the Constitution online and use a browser that has a "find" feature, but you didn't even look. You just presumed I was lying or misinformed. Here:

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 12:

"To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;"

Why would it limit the appropriation to two years after it says Congress has that power? The Constitution doesn't make another specific limit like this on any other power of Congress. It doesn't make it on the Navy, whose Clause is immediately below. That looks like a limit on a standing army to me.

What's the election cycle on the House of Representatives? Two years. In other words, the House (where appropriation bills have to start) doesn't have the power to extend an appropriation for an army (not a military intervention or a war, but the army itself) for two years. Meaning also people would get to vote between the time it forms an army and its next appropriation.

If you're going to say we can't limit executive power by legal means, you might as well just flush the Constitution, because that's the idea behind the entire document. Not doing that is the same view of executive power dictatorships take. Why wouldn't every branch of government need this "flexibility" to "help" the president? Remember, the Constitution is there to prevent dictatorship, and it's odd that you see the necessity for loosening restraints on the Office of government that naturally threatens it the most.

And given Obama's enthusiastic grasping and extension of executive powers that Dubya pioneered, I'd say dictatorship is exactly the threat now.

There are two other places where the Constitution looks decidedly anti-standing army. One of them is the Second Amendment, and if you look at the first draft of it, in the Constitution of Virginia written by Thomas Jefferson, you see that.

Really, if this is the current reality where we need an expensive standing army, we should amend the Constitution to reflect that. Keeping it the way it is just invites disrespect for the rest of it, where whole sections can be declared "impractical."

Sorry to hear it though not surprised unless they make good on their promises to not get more involved. I'm not especially confident that they'd do that dispite what they claim given their steady drift to the right.

The gopers are hopeful to get a goper into the Prez office. In trying to impeach Prez O they would eff up what they desire the most, total control and one is the ability to go to war w/o approval from congress. Y'know they are itching to attack Iran.

So what if impeaching Obama would hinder the goal of formally establishing an imperial presidency that can go to war without congressional approval?

Of course, they would ever think of impeaching him for violating the constitution, well, not a real violation of the constitution, any way. They'll impeach him for a blow job. And if that isn't true, then they'll make it up and suborn perjury with a video tape provided by Andrew Breitbart and funded by the Koch brothers.

30. To be fair the extent of their stance has been that if Obama does it, it must be for a reason

Edited on Wed Mar-30-11 07:02 PM by liberation

and thus perfectly reasonable. Which is why these New Dems are totally different from the Old Republicans who used to support whatever Bush did, because it must have been for a reason, and thus perfectly reasonable.

I am frankly very entertained, it is amusing to see a Dem president implement a military intervention (we do not have wars anymore) and seeing some of the die hard Dems use some of the very same justifications (language even) than the die hard Republicans used during the run up to Iraq.

36. it will be even more entertaining when the self-fufilling prophecy of president palin..

rears it's fugly head. will the people who support our actions in afghanistan and libya because of a democratic admin still support them? or will the hypocrisy be on full display (again) as their views flip 180 degrees?

We would all expect any republican to thumb his nose at Congress this way. Or a professional triangulator like Clinton who constantly tried to act like a Republican. It looks like the only time Obama isn't a coward is when he's emulating Clinton, or his hero Reagan, and setting himself up against the left.

72. Not so simple. Start with the Constitution, which gives Congress the

Edited on Thu Mar-31-11 01:54 PM by No Elephants

EXCLUSIVE power to raise armies and navies (then being the only kind of troops known), the EXCLUSIVE power to declare war and the EXCLUSIVE power to fund wars (or anything else). And, subject to the foregoing exclusive powers of Congress, the President has Constitutional power as Commander in Chief of the troops (though Congress has power.

(That way, a good portion of the people who voted to declare war will answer for their votes at the polls within two years, at most.)

So far, so good, from the Continental Congress until 1950-1962 or so.

However, then came the Korean "Police Action" and the Vietnam Something or Other, where Presidents got us involved in wars without so much as a "by your leave" to Congress, raising serious Constitutional "questions, to put it euphemistically. So, we got the War Powers Resolution of 1963.

Btw, anything passed by Congress and signed by the President (or veto overridden) as the Constitution provides IS a law, regardless of whether they call it "law" or "resolution" or "Harry." However, as with any law, the question arises, "Is the War Powers Resolution a Constitutionally valid law, or does the War Powers Resolution conflict with/violate the Constitution?"

Some say, "It's Constitutional." Some say, "No, it provides for an unconstitutional delegation to the President of Congress' EXCLUSIVE power to declare war." Still others say, "No, it's an unconstitutional restriction on the powers of the President as Commander in Chief."

And, now, we have the Executive Branh not only starting a war without a delaration of war by Congress, as required by the Constitution, but also saying it will ignore Congress if Congress says "Stop," as the War Powers Resolution of 1963 gives Congress the power to do.

However, Obama consulted with the leadership of both the house and senate before taking action...and then there's this...Senate Resolution 85 which passed on march, 1st unanimously...

(7) urges the United Nations Security Council to take such further action as may be necessary to protect civilians in Libya from attack, including the possible imposition of a no-fly zone over Libyan territory;

After Bush and Iraq it's easy to fear presidential power but you have to consider that Afghanistan had congressional preapproval and turned out just as bad and in neither case did congress ever formally declare war, nor will you see congress formally declare war again because they recognised with the war powers act that having a presidential scapegoat made politics easier for congress.

So, the GOP finds themselves being the peaceniks verses a purportedly weak, Democratic president? I never thought I'd see the day. I can't wait for them to organize sit ins and marches for peace, armed to the teeth. This is Vietnam: The Farce.

47. Obama was "lecturer in law" was not a "professor", and there is a difference.

Professors of law are subject to the "publish or perish" rule of all academics. Lecturers are generally exempt, and are more like adjuncts.

Obama has not published any significant legal scholarship on this or any other legal topic. If he had, I'm sure that we would have heard about it by now. At Harvard in his day, members of the Law Review were not forced to submit legal scholarship to be published in the Law Review. This appears to be different from many law reviews and journals, particularly that of Yale, Harvard's competitor, where at the time Obama was in law school, each member of the Law Journal had to write a substantial piece of legal scholarship that was of publishable quality.

It has been reported that a friend of his from the Law Review, who is now a real professor at Georgetown Law School, that Obama found the Constitution to be a flawed document, but I don't recall that the professor disclosed details of Obama's views, which I think would be helpful here.

In sum, Obama was not a professor and published no material that would give us a real idea of how his legal mind works or what his theory of the Constitution actually is.

86. Many think that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional, BUT that analysis

Edited on Thu Mar-31-11 03:33 PM by No Elephants

cuts both ways. Please see Reply 72 (as amended by Reply 80).

Since he's a former law professor, perhaps people will listen this time."

Obama has had no He's had no legal education beyond 3 years of law school, like any lawyer who did not pursue his or her educatiion beyod law school.

Obama then got a job as a lawyer and a part-time job teaching Constitutional law, which he did for a number of years (10?). None of that does means Obama is at the level of a constitutional law scholar or expert.

Lifelong Constitutional law scholars disagree about the War Powers Resolution. What in hell would make someone who taught Constitutional law on a part time basis the final authority on these issues?

103. You don't think there are "boots on ground" in Libya? CIA wears Sneakers?

Yeah...there's a bridge in Brooklyn that's for sale. We already have American Educated "Shadow Government" we allowed back into Syria that is in place to "manage the coup" if and when Ghaddafi leaves. So, this is already Orchestrated. It was in the NeoCons Plan back under Bush.

The sad thing is that Obama and Hillary are following the NeoCon Plan. I didn't vote for Obama for MORE NEO-CONS! Did YOU?

I'm amazed she would say something this dumb. While it's true that every president since 1973 has regarded War Powers as unconstitutional, definitely not without justification, this kind of comment only makes Congress mad for no good reason. I don't mean just the idiots on the right, but everybody. This is patronizing to an equal branch of government. I'm rather ambivalent on the whole Libya bit myself, or maybe just indecisive, but this is not a situation where you tell Congress to go to hell. Libya just doesn't justify a fight with Congress over War Powers. The difference between who wins and loses there is extremely important to Libyans, but it will minimal impact on most Americans' lives.

97. "The White House would forge ahead with military action in Libya..."

....Hillary knows it doesn't matter what the Constitution says about war as long as fat tony and the fascists control the game....

....every Washington politician understands that the President declares war and we schmucks pay for them....it's called a 'division of labor'....how else would we ever be able to maintain our assembly line of perpetual war....

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